Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS)

Background

In June 2015, the 17th World Meteorological Congress requested a plan for an Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Information System (IG3IS). In December 2015, the UNFCCC nations forged the Paris Agreement, codifying the idea of nationally determined contributions (NDCs). These nationally appropriate pledges to reduce GHG emissions serve to unify all nations in an effort to slow and then stop global climate disruption. These pledges vary by nation, geographical region, and economic ability. Regardless of the strategies and mechanisms applied, the ability to implement long-term policies and manage them effectively will require consistent, reliable, and timely GHG emissions information. A framework capable of accepting and promoting a range of advanced GHG emission quantification capabilities could improve the quality of and confidence in GHG emission inventories. The IG3IS will be such an information source and framework that will join atmospheric GHG composition and flux measurements and other observations (the “top-down”) with spatially and temporally explicit socioeconomic emission inventory data (the “bottom-up"). The combination of these data sources will better inform emission reduction policies and measures.

IG3IS Statement

IG3IS is envisioned as an observationally based information system for determining trends and distributions of GHGs in the atmosphere and the ways in which they are consistent or not with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is being done already on a global scale through existing networks, but currently provides only a modicum of useful information at the spatial scale of nations and regions managing emissions and offsets. The IG3IS effort is aimed at improving the granularity of observations and analyses, in order to support the planning and management of Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) mitigation efforts by nations. IG3IS is not designed to check compliance with regulations, but rather to provide information on policy- and management-relevant scales and ensure that the information provided is consistent with a global network of high quality observations and models.

WMOs role (in a nutshell)

WMO’s role regarding greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stems from its capabilities in ensuring the high quality, consistency, and continuity of greenhouse gas and other observations of atmospheric composition, developing high quality atmospheric transport and data inversion models, and ensuring a solid basis from which to make weather and climate-relevant predictions. WMO has proven to be a viable and successful coordinating program for atmospheric measurements and model improvements around the world, for leveraging capabilities across nations, and building capacity in developing nations.

IG3IS Approach

Extend the international WMO Global Atmosphere Watch network of in situ sampling stations to fill in underrepresented regions globally, thereby improving national sampling of regional greenhouse gas emissions, and improve transport models to capture a small footprint on global scales. Expanding the network to increase collection of vertical profiles of greenhouse gases would constrain atmospheric transport and facilitate interpretation of satellite data. The vertical expansion could be done with the cooperation of commercial aircraft and with balloons flown to higher altitudes. Improvements in transport are already underway in WMO efforts such as HIW and S2S, but this project would bring global consistency to bear. If the models are not globally coherent and mass not conserved, then they risk introducing biases in estimated greenhouse gas fluxes. Ideally, all major emitting nations and groups of neighboring smaller nations would participate in the cooperative network and in the modeling effort. This may require financial assistance and capacity building to aid the poorer nations that dominate the more undersampled regions.